a date with grandpa mark

Mark and I had a rare date night this weekend. We’ve been really bad about date night lately, and the sad truth is that even though we value it IN THEORY, in practice we often just don’t have the energy to feel like we can make an evening “worth” the money we spend on babysitting. It seems like every tine a schedule date night comes around, what I’d really rather do is go back to my bedroom, shut the door, and just take a nap. It’s hard to rally for a night out on the town.

So Friday night, we had a date night scheduled, and it had been a particularly exhausting day of work for me. Mark came home, and I went back to my room to change, except that instead, I laid down on the bed and fell fast asleep. Apparently, Mark did the same thing on the living room sofa. So our babysitter showed up to a house with two sleeping parents and four kids entertaining themselves in the backyard.

We managed to get it together and actually get out of the house, but then we pulled our standard date night routine, wherein we go to dinner, and about an hour in, start negotiating how long until we can reasonably return to the comfort of our own home without totally embarrassing ourselves in front of the sitter. Because wwe’re usually ready to go home about an hour and a half after we’ve left. Once we’ve eaten a meal and are reasonably certain that the children are asleep, let’s be honest. At this point we're really only refraining from high-tailing it back to the house to save face with the sitter. So on this night, we decided to walk around the mall.

An aside: my husband is impervious to fashion and anything on-trend in general. He is still listening to the same rotation of 20 classic rock CD’s that he has had since high school. He shops at Banana Republic, where he manages to have bought the same outfit, over and over again, for the last decade. He watches the History Channel. For fun. Once or twice a year he will dip his toes into the waters of this new-fangled social media thing and post a picture of his lunch at Subway.

So the combination of being tired and a bit punch drunk, added to his aggressive cynicism towards all things trendy/”bouugie”/ hipster, meant that Grandpa Mark was in rare form. Here are a few of his best quotes from the night,

In Crate and Barrel:

“So many things that you can buy and still be unhappy”

In Restoration Hardware:

“Most of this store is a joke on rich people, right?:

In an (empty) store full of overpriced knicknacks:

“Nobody buys this %^&^$.. This store is unsustainable.”

In a store of furniture made of reclaimed wood:

“I don’t want to eat off of a table with this wood. It’s unsanitary.”

Upon seeing this sign:

“She’s gonna skate in those heels?”

Ah, my sweet husband. He knows how to make a girl laugh. And sometimes he’s actually trying.

For the record, we managed to stay out a full two hours on hour date night. At which point we came home and watched I Love You, Man in our pajamas. It was awesome.